The Rojas Pinilla Dictatorship

Initial response to the coup was enthusiastic and widespread; only
the elements at the two extremes of the political spectrum protested the
action. Rojas Pinilla's first goal was to end the violence, and to that
end he offered amnesty and government aid to those belligerents who
would lay down their arms. Thousands complied with the offer, and there
was relative calm for several months after the coup. Other immediate
steps taken by Rojas Pinilla included the transfer of the National
Police to the armed forces in an effort to depoliticize the police,
relaxation of press censorship, and release of political prisoners.

The government also started an extensive series of public works
projects to construct transportation networks and hospitals and improved
the system of credit for small farmers. Rojas Pinilla attempted to
respond to demands for social reform through populist measures patterned
after the policies of General Juan Domingo Perón (1946-55) in
Argentina. The National Social Welfare Service, under the direction of
his daughter María Eugenia Rojas de Moreno Díaz, was created to meet
the most pressing needs of the poor, and the public works projects began
to provide jobs for the masses of urban unemployed. The tax system was
restructured to place more of the burden on the elite. Poorly
administered, however, these reform programs met with little success.
Rojas Pinilla was unable to restructure Colombian society.

Rojas Pinilla attempted to recruit political support from
nontraditional sources. He courted the military by raising salaries and
constructing lavish officers' clubs, and he counted the church by
espousing a "Christian" doctrine as the foundation of his
government. Through the creation of a "third force," Rojas
Pinilla attempted to fuse the masses of peasants and urban workers into
a movement that would counter the elite's traditional domination of the
country's politics; however, this served more to anger the elite than to
create a populist political base.

Support for the Rojas Pinilla regime faded within the first year.
Toward the end of 1953, rural violence was renewed, and Rojas Pinilla
undertook strict measures to counter it. Following a substantial
increase in police and military budgets, the government assumed a
dictatorial and demagogic character. The government reversed its initial
social reform measures and relied instead on repression. It tightened
press censorship and closed a number of the country's leading
newspapers, both Liberal and Conservative. Under a new law, anyone who
spoke disrespectfully of the president could be jailed or fined. Many
were killed or wounded at the socalled Bull Ring Massacre in February
1956 for failing to cheer Rojas Pinilla sufficiently. The administration
became increasingly corrupt, and graft in government circles was
rampant. In addition, economic deterioration, triggered by a drop in
coffee prices and exacerbated by inflationary government policies,
seriously threatened the gains made since World War II. Efforts of
government troops to suppress the widespread violence degenerated into
an enforcement of the president's tenuous hold on power, and their
methods became more brutal. Scorched-earth policies were introduced to
confront the 20,000 belligerents estimated to be active in rural areas.

Rojas Pinilla tried to provide a legal facade for his dictatorship. A
new constitution (the Constitution of 1886 was abolished in 1954)
created a Legislative Assembly composed of fifty-nine Conservatives and
thirty-three Liberals, twenty of whom were nominated by the president.
The assembly elected Rojas Pinilla to the presidency in 1954 for four
years; in 1957 it confirmed him as president until 1962, an action that
consolidated mounting opposition to Rojas Pinilla and precipitated his
subsequent fall from power.

By early 1957, most organized groups opposed Rojas Pinilla. Liberal
and Conservative elites, to whom the populist and demagogic Rojas
Pinilla had become a greater threat than their traditional party
adversaries, decided to stop feuding and to join forces against the
president under the banner of the National Front. Conservative and
Liberal leaders had been negotiating an alliance since early 1956. In
July 1956, Gómez--in exile in Spain--and Lleras Camargo signed the
Declaration of Benidorm, a document that laid the foundation for the
future institutionalization of a coalition government. The moderate
Conservatives, supporting Rojas Pinilla until 1957, did not join in
negotiations with the Liberals until that time.

Although factionalism between moderates and reactionaries slowed the
process, all concerned parties signed a final agreement in San Carlos in
1957. Based on the Sitges Agreement signed between the reactionaries and
the Liberals in Sitges, Spain, in 1957, the San Carlos Agreement
stipulated that a Conservative, either moderate or reactionary, would be
the first president under a National Front and that he would be elected
by a National Congress previously elected by popular vote. The Sitges
and San Carlos agreements, which sought to reduce interparty tensions
and provide a basis for power-sharing between the parties, also called
for the following: restoration of the Constitution of 1886, which had
been abolished by Rojas Pinilla; the alternation of the presidency
between the two parties every four years; parity between parties in all
legislative bodies; a required two-thirds majority vote for the passage
of legislation; the establishment of an administrative career service of
neutral parties not subject to partisan appointment; women's suffrage
and equal political rights for women; and the devotion of at least 10
percent of the national budget to education.

As the party leaders laid the basis for a coalition government, the
tides of discontent turned against Rojas Pinilla. When Rojas Pinilla
ordered the arrest of Guillermo León Valencia, a Conservative leader
involved in the formation of the National Front, Rojas Pinilla was
confronted with student demonstrations, massive strikes, riots, and
finally the declared opposition of the church and the defection of
top-ranking military officers. In May 1957, faced with a multitude of
protesters and top military leaders requesting his resignation, Rojas
Pinilla resigned and went into temporary exile in Spain. Power reverted
to a five-man junta led by General Gabriel París, who promised the free
election of a civilian president in August 1958.

In December 1957, Colombians voted overwhelmingly in a national
plebiscite to approve the Sitges and San Carlos agreements as amendments
to the Constitution of 1886. Congressional elections were held soon
thereafter, with the result that the reactionary Conservatives emerged
as the largest faction of the Conservative half of Congress. Gómez
vetoed the proposed presidential candidacy of Valencia, who until then
had been the strongest Conservative candidate. As a result of this
division within the PC, faction leaders agreed to allow a Liberal to be
the first president under the National Front and to extend the provision
of the coalition government from twelve to sixteen years. These
agreements were ratified by Congress as constitutional amendments in
1958. In August of that year, Lleras Camargo, a Liberal, was elected as
the first president under the National Front.